Users review service virtualization tools

Developers and IT pros weigh in on service virtualization offerings from CA, IBM, Micro Focus, Parasoft, and SmartBear Software

There is a wide array of benefits from using a service virtualization tool in your enterprise organization, from enabling continuous testing to expanding your company’s access to more systems and services that would otherwise be very time-consuming to implement. In their reviews, IT Central Station users cite earlier defect identification, integration with other products, and a variety of licensing options as valuable features when selecting service virtualization solutions for their companies.

CA Service Virtualization

Scalability

“It’s easy to scale CA Service Virtualization because of the way the services can be placed onto a platform. You could have a couple of services running on one server and if you have a high demand, you could put them on another server. You’re able to have many services running across the organization. They don’t have to be co-located.”

A system-based solution

Jayanthi S., senior engineer at American Express, writes that CA Service Virtualization allows for a wide variety of virtualization options with its system-based configuration:

“The most valuable feature of CA Service Virtualization is that overall, it is a system-based product for virtualizing the services. There are many tools that offer RESTful calls. However, with this product, we have many other options such as database service virtualization, mainframe virtualization and other wide range of virtualization options.”

Room for improvement

This IT manager at a retailer notes that CA Service Virtualization could provide more insights with a comprehensive dashboard:

“I would like to see some kind of dashboard that shows all of the dev test scripts that we have out there so that we don’t have to rewrite the same ones across the enterprise. We can look to see what’s there and reuse some of the ones that are there. Right now, it’s hard to figure out what we have.”

IBM Rational Test Virtualization Server

Stability

Spencer R., head of test center of excellence at Maersk Line highlights IBM Rational Test Virtualization Server’s stability as a valuable feature:

“It is an absolutely stable tool and we have not experienced any downtime. It couldn’t have been better. We have been using this tool for approximately 300-odd services, and we have not experienced an issue with it even once.”

IBM MQ support

“IBM RTVS has many useful features, but support for IBM MQ over this tool is unbeatable. It has very easy and good validation techniques used for SWIFT, XSD, and WSDL validations. Another feature is where we can specify optional nodes/tags of XML or any other type of message format within the test and stub definitions. This is also unbeatable.”

Room for improvement

For IT analyst Rekha C., IBM RTVS has room for improvement in its reporting and ability to implement custom functions:

“As per my working experience over the last three and half years with RIT/RTVS, I would consider the two following areas of improvement:

Reporting: In the recent release of RCPT, the “Usage graph” feature is included, but that still needs improvements in terms of UI and timeline filtering criteria.

Implementing custom functions is a bit of a tedious job, as ECMAScript does not support some of the standard JavaScript functions. Also, the Script editor window is not user-friendly.”

Micro Focus Service Virtualization

Integration

“Most importantly for us, it integrates well with other products and we’re able to get great support from partners and from HP. Everyone needs test environments, dead environments, environments for performance testing, a stage environment, etc. We can build them, but they’re expensive. With Service Virtualization, it’s much less expensive and we can turn them off and on when we need to.”

Scalable solution

This IT manager, EAD QE CoE lifecycle virtualization at a pharma/biotech company, points out Micro Focus Service Virtualization’s scalability as one of its many valuable features:

“It is a scalable solution, capable of handling ~3,000 TPS. It supports a wide variety of message formats and transports. It reduces infrastructure costs and downtime risk, and eliminates expenses from dev/test access to third-party services.”

Room for improvement

David N., a service manager at a financial services firm, recalls that his company experienced some difficulty with the solution’s initial setup:

“I heard from my colleagues who said the first setup was a bit challenging. However, with support from the HPE team, it was good. We were able to sort out the issues that came up.”

Parasoft Service Virtualization

Early testing

Bhumika T., a test lead at a financial services firm, describes how testing early with Parasoft Service Virtualization made a large impact at her company:

“Parasoft Virtualize helped us in accelerating application delivery by allowing us to test early. We were given an application under test when some of the major back-end components were not available, apart from the service contracts being ready. Using SV allowed us to expose defects when they were fastest, easiest, and least costly to resolve. We were able to complete system testing and resolve interface integration issues even before the real back-end system was made available. Our organization was able to shift left using Parasoft Virtualize.”

Detachment from integration middleware

Ryan P., automated test engineer at a transportation company, writes that the way Parasoft helps detach his company’s applications from integration middleware is particularly helpful:

“We now have the ability to test our complex applications completely detached from integration middleware. This improves the reliability, speed, cost, and simplicity of testing. Most folks go in thinking small, which is a good start. However, once you have learned the capabilities of the tool, think big for the best solutions.”

Room for improvement

Robert S., IT specialist at a financial services firm, notes that Parasoft Service Virtualization could benefit from expanding its authorization capabilities:

“It should have more fine-grained authorization. The authorization is currently role-based, i.e., what one can do.

In addition to that, data-based authorization (with what virtualized services) would be very useful in an environment where multiple teams are using the product.”

SmartBear ServiceV Pro

Better continuous integration platform

“It is very beneficial in reducing the redundancies during development, which can easily provide a better platform for continuous integration (CI) by cutting down the dependencies on the rest of the API team.

Various recordings can be done so as to keep track of the transactions being made each time and accordingly manipulate the way our APIs would run.”